Wednesday, April 19, 2017

Judge My Playlist, Volume 1: Cuter

The chains that bind you...

Don’t think of it as a new feature, so much as an easier way
to have fun with music.

I used to pile songs onto CDs. I made them for road trips,
or just for things to have around the house; sometimes I made them for people
(say, my wife), or for special occasions (say, for a particularly long road
trip), but it was mostly about the work of creating playlists before Spotify
(and/or the platform of your choice*) came along and spoiled The Labor of Love
that goes into building a playlist by way of, more than anything else, making
it easy to edit a playlist.

By that I mean, if anything got lost with the end of the old
audio tape/CD “playlist,” it’s the idea of finality. If, or, in my case, when,
you fuck up and put the wrong song on a CD, or if you put things in an order
that trips up the flow…well, that’s it. You’re stuck with it. There is no
editing, no deciding you’re sick of the song you keep putting on every CD after
the fact, because, again, no editing. (And…this is factually untrue, at least
with audio cassettes; recording over those things happened all the time…but who
uses cassettes anymore? CDs, like diamonds, are forever.)

I’m not going to put a lot into these posts – a series I’m
calling, “Judge My Playlist.” All I’m going to do is list/link to a CD that I
actually made and invite anyone so moved to comment on it. And, honestly, I don’t
care what you think – and I mean that in a good way. Every song that I put onto
a CD is a song that I just…like, or even love. Some shocked person telling me
that I have shit taste doesn’t mean all that much to me anymore, that’s all. To
rephrase the premise, “I don’t care what you think” means, have fucking at it.
Rhapsodize about what you loathe in my musical taste. As Debbie Harry sneered over one of my favorite Blondie songs, “Rip Her to
Shreds.” (Wait for it...) Or tell me what you liked. Music is meant to be shared, and, as I’m
fond of saying, this is supposed to be fun, dammit.

And so, Volume 1: below is a list of songs and artists that
I put on a CD I titled “Cuter.” I created a Spotify playlist for it (now on Twitter), but, in
future posts (and....again, wait for it), I’ll post links to all the songs listed that I can find. *I’m
doing that because I recognize that not everyone has Spotify, and even the
people who have a streaming service might not want to put in the work of
plugging in all the songs. It’s just that I only came up with this today, and I
got stuff tomorrow, so…yeah, next week with the links. With that, I give you
the playlist for “Cuter.”

One last thing: I always feel like I put a minimum of one
absolute fucking clunker of a song on every CD. Try to figure out which one it
is if you wanna…

1. Build me Up Buttercup - The Foundations

2. Littlest Things – Lily Allen

3. Look at Me Up a Tree – Looper (shit…no Spotify, no Youtube;
LOST)

4. Twiggy, Twiggy – Pizzicato Five (hey…learning the limits
of Spotify; see link to left)

5. Bring It On Home to Me – Britt Daniels

6. Epistle to Dippy – Donovan

7. (My Baby Does) Good Sculpture – The Rezillos

8. Think About Me – The Decembrists

9. Girl – The Beatles

10. Bowl of Oranges – Bright Eyes

11. Homo Rainbow – Ween

12. Rip Her to Shreds – Blondie (the SHIT!? Didn’t even know
that was in the inaugural)